by The Great White Gypsy

Thursday night, I rolled down to SIFF Cinema for The Sentimental Engine Slayer, a film I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the guitarist who formed Mars Volta, makes his feature film debut with a story he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in. He plays Barlam, a young man growing up in El Paso, Texas. His parents are divorced, he lives with his druggy sister and her white boyfriend, works at a small grocery store with his friend Oscar, and spends all his time building models of 1967 Mercury Cougars. Told in a fragmented, non-linear, surreal fashion, this is the story of his “coming of age”, and his attempts at a social life and losing his virginity.

When it comes to cinema, the term “avant garde” always makes me cringe a little bit. Mainly because people do dumb shit, call it “experimental”, market it as avant garde, and the masses fall all over themselves appreciating things because they don’t understand them. Luckily, that’s not the case with Engine Slayer. At least for the most part. Rodriguez-Lopez owns this film. It’s obviously his baby. Sometimes, you can just tell watching a movie that the final product is as close to the original idea as the writer/director can possibly get, and this is one of them. As disjointed, anxious, and surrealistically ordinary as the film is, at the end you can see all the pieces. I genuinely think that, from his first brainstorming session to final cuts, Rodriguez-Lopez did exactly what he wanted to do. It’s not maturity you see in the technical aspects, but it is an energetic, uncompromising focus that impressed the hell out of me.

As I said, the story is non-linear, and very disjointed. But unlike other films that boast the same format, I felt the scenes in Engine Slayer couldn’t have been organized any other way. As if the film isn’t linear, but the story is. (Now you know why I waited two days to review this one. Is any of this making sense?) We are fed bits of information at a time, in a very purposeful sequence. The tension and anxiety just from the frenetic plot is constant, and the music and cinematography make you want to have a panic attack at critical moments. In the intense scenes, the music becomes distorted to the point of speaker feedback, and the dialog gets garbled. This mirrors Barlam’s confusion and desperation and, though it takes a little getting used to, is a very effective tool. New cinematographer Michael Rizzi is solid with the camera shots. Whether it’s a fixed shot of a chaotic scene or a shaky tracking shot of something innocuous, everything has purpose. The final experimental touch seemed to be the bilingual script. The narration in the film is all in Spanish with subtitles. The dialog is mostly English, with some Spanish, both subtitled and not. The transition with all of it is very smooth, and understandable being set in El Paso.

Rodriguez-Lopez is even great in front of the camera. The rest of the cast is basically support for his main roll. Some of them pull of a little realism here and there, but he is the focal point, and for his first roll he is amazingly immersed in the character. He seems very comfortable in front of the camera, but considering the circumstances of his writing the script, i wouldn’t expect anything else.

Which brings me to my personal gripes with the film. According to the festival blog for the Tribeca Film Festival, Rodriguez-Lopez made this film because he was constantly having a nightmare with the same elements: confusion, anxiety, and murder. He wanted to get it out, and this film was his therapy. Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with this concept; H.P. Lovecraft did the same thing with horror stories. But when you write, direct, produce, and act in something that came from your unconscious mind, and you cast your family and friends in most of the rolls, and decide to experiment with it, it comes off a tad too narcissistic. When someone makes a film, especially an experimental one, it can’t just be about how you make it, it also has to be about why you make it. Why am I telling this story? Am I even telling a story? As technically phenomenal as The Sentimental Engine Slayer is, my first thought when the credits rolled was, “What was the point of that?”. The character made no breakthrough in his “coming of age”, he didn’t get the girl, or become popular. Come to think of it, his social status didn’t really change at all.

There is a list of things in this film that I didn’t see a reason for. Transexuals, Barlam’s compulsion to strangle anyone and everyone, his obsession with the kid he suspects is his half-brother, his father being his psychiatrist, his sister’s drug addiction, his collection of crucifixes, the awkward and completely unnecessary scene involving a gun, and numerous other minor characters and subplots. While I appreciate a surreal story about a kid finding his way in life, I don’t think the film even says how old Barlam is. There is also nothing I can identify as inherently “El Paso” about his story. (it’s true, I’ve never been there). Granted, my favorite surreal mindfucks are Mullholland Dr. and Gozu, both of which prompt a loud “What the fuck??” afterward, but there was something just…unnecessary about so much of this film’s plot elements. And in a character-driven film where so much of the substance is Barlam’s interaction with the world around him, I think there should’ve been a little more restraint involved.

Personally, I didn’t find this film entertaining, enlightening, or particularly thought-provoking. That being said, I cannot deny that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is just as ridiculously talented behind a camera as he is holding a guitar, and whether or not anyone else will like this film, I think any cinephile or Mars Volta fan should consider it a must see.

FINAL GRADE: C+

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